The present invention relates to data storage systems, and more particularly, this invention relates to gain control systems and methods.
In magnetic storage systems, data is read from and written onto magnetic recording media utilizing magnetic transducers commonly. Data is written on the magnetic recording media by moving a magnetic recording transducer to a position over the media where the data is to be stored. The magnetic recording transducer then generates a magnetic field, which encodes the data into the magnetic media. Data is read from the media by similarly positioning the magnetic read transducer and then sensing the magnetic field of the magnetic media. Read and write operations may be independently synchronized with the movement of the media to ensure that the data can be read from and written to the desired location on the media.
An important and continuing goal in the data storage industry is that of increasing the density of data stored on a medium as well as read-back speed. For tape storage systems, that goal has lead to increasing the track density on recording tape, and increasing the per-channel bit rate. However, the development of small footprint, higher performance tape drive systems has created various problems in the design of such tape systems.